YEA !!

Yes, we are now in beautiful countryside after zooming through Burnley (well, if you can “zoom” in a narrow boat, but you know what I mean); Barrowford Locks and Foulbridge Tunnel.    And just had 2 amazingly sunny, warm days.    So we celebrated with some sunning in the deckchair, eating ice cream at a lockside café and letting the fire go out  - first time since the beginning of last October.    


Today we have scrubbed the boat roof and the towpath side boat side - glory be!    Again a first since before the long cold dark winter descended.     Clocks spring forward this coming weekend; lambs playing in the fields, daffs flowering everywhere, trees starting to bud; some wildlife sitting on their nests by the canal  - it’s good to be alive.


Dai is right - now we are in Yorkshire, the Leeds and Liverpool canal is stunning - just a shame about all that we had to go through to get here!     Going through Burnley wasn’t as awful as Blackburn - you travel along “the Straight Mile” (which is actually apparently three quarters of a mile) high above the town so it was interesting looking down on the buildings. 


We are now moored near the Anchor Pub at Saltersford just outside Barnoldswick (I was corrected earlier today by a local because it is pronounced Barlick !!).   Dai remembers drinking there when he did this part of the canal years ago in a hireboat - the crew won a gallon of beer at Quiz Night.    Unfortunately they didn’t have any Black Cat beer (is it still made?   Just checked on the internet and, yes, it is still brewed by Moorhouse  in Burnley so hopefully we will be able to sample it before long) which I was really looking forward to after Dai’s excellent recommendation.    He says the pub is still the same - just less busy.   This establishment , built beside the old packhorse road, is an historic canalside pub where a second building was built on top of the first meaning you now drink in what was once the bedrooms.   


After our busy day srubbing, washing and polishing we think we’ve earned a pint or two so we are off to the pub after dinner …… talk to you all next Wednesday.




Since last blog we have done …  21 miles and 14 locks
This makes total since Setting Off ….. 1047 miles and  925 locks  

well, they have tried to brighten up the canalside in Burnley

halfway on the Leeds and Liverpool canal

all those chimney pots fascinated me in Burnley

standard of pub in Burnley ???

as well as being bloody hard work, I could only just reach to wind the paddle

thought we'd left traffic lights behind us!    These are at Foulbridge Tunnel.  We were lucky and they were on green